Paul Magne Haakonsen Continuing the legend of Ip Man, this 2010 movie continues on the tale from the 2008 movie, and again with Donnie Yen at the lead role of Ip Man.It was nice to see the movie revolve around the early starts of Ip Man's Wing Chun school and see how harsh the terms of such existence turned out to be. And it was an interesting approach with the numerous schools of martial arts and how their structure worked.I loved the interaction between Ip Man and the auntie with the laundry on the roof. Those scenes, although having no big impact on the storyline, were just a really nice touch to the movie.Similar to the 2008 movie, then "Ip Man 2" is heavy on martial arts, and it was also equally well choreographed and executed on the screen. It is always a pleasure to watch Donnie Yen in action in movies such as these, and he does so with flying colors.The acting in "Ip Man 2" was good, and they had a good group of actors and actresses for the various roles. And they did a great job with setting up the bad guy as a person that you really didn't root for in any way, and they had a great guy cast for that particular role, as Darren Shahlavi did a great job in portraying him. And once again, there are some impressive Hong Kong talents on the cast list as well, aside from Donnie Yen, which includes Sammo Kam-Bo Hung and Simon Yam.There is a good continuous flow to the movie, with a great combination of storytelling and martial arts.If you enjoyed the 2008 "Ip Man", then you will most definitely also enjoy the 2010 "Ip Man 2" movie, no doubt about it.

estebangonzalez10 ¨Master, you really can fight ten men at once! ¨I don't think there is anyone as exciting as Donnie Yen when it comes to martial arts, and once again he delivers with some very impressive moves and some great choreographed fighting scenes. What Ip Man 2 lacks in storytelling, it makes up for in cool action sequences. This sequel may not live up to the original, but it still is an entertaining movie, and you can never get enough of Donnie Yen. He is just such a natural on screen and his moves are superb; this role was made for him. Yen teams up once again with brilliant director, Wilson Yip, with whom he has worked five times already, and with screenwriter Edmond Wong. The spectacular choreographed fighting scenes were directed by Sammo Hung Kam-Bo who also had a supporting role in this film. The story is like an oriental version of Rocky with Sammo Hung Kam-Bo playing a similar character to that of Apollo Creed and Donnie Yen, Rocky. He begins as sort of a villain, but ends up befriending Ip Man and facing the British version of Drago, Twister. The enemy in this film is the oppressive British regime. This martial art movie was a huge blockbuster in Hong Kong. Despite it having terrific action scenes, it does fail story wise with poor developed characters and some highly stereotyped Brits as the enemy. On the other hand, it is very fast paced and has a lot of action that is worth your time because the martial art scenes are extremely well choreographed and among the best I've seen. The movie picks up right where the first left off as Yip Man (Donnie Yen) migrates from Foshan (after the war with the Japanese) to Hong Kong which happens to be under British colonial rule. Yip Man has a hard time adapting to Hong Kong as his martial art discipline of Wing Chun is unknown in this place. He finally finds one student who seems to be interested in learning this new technique but he encounters some resistance from other martial arts masters who claim he has to pass a test in order to be allowed to teach martial arts in their land. Master Hung Chun-Nam (Sammo Hung Kam-Bo) resists Yip Man at first, but slowly begins to befriend him when they find a common enemy. A western boxer named Twister (Darren Shahlavi) has come to defy their sport by claiming that he can defeat any martial art master. The question then becomes whether or not Yip Man and Master Hung can defend the pride of their nation over this boxing killing machine who has defied them. Lynn Hung reprises her role as Cheung Wing-Sing, Yip Man's wife who has migrated with him to Hong Kong. The discipline of Wing Chun involves a lot of close combat so that makes the action scenes much more interesting because everything becomes up close and personal. There are some issues with the storytelling but everything is just an excuse for the next stylized action scene. These fights never disappoint and you don't get tired of them. The film is nationalistic and that explains the Brit stereotypes. Yip Man 2 claims to be a real life story, but it is more of a fiction work than a bio film. The only true fact about this film is that Yip Man was Bruce Lee's Master, but all the events in this film happen prior to that and are mostly made up. Seeing Yen in action is what really makes this film worthwhile, but if you are expecting it to live up to its predecessor then you might leave a bit disappointed. http://estebueno10.blogspot.com/

edwithmj I turned on the TV a few nights ago to see if any good films were on as it was late and I was bored. I turn to Ip Man 2 which after first thinking it was a film based on a video game character, I learn is supposed to be a biopic.The first half of this film was a standard martial arts film with lots of Chinese men fighting each other. I think the main character Pac-Man - sorry, Ip Man was apparently not respected because of his style but gains respect from masters of other styles after he beats them. The fight scenes are pretty ridiculous and over-choreographed; wires were obviously used. The first half was therefore acceptable standard fare for Hong Kong films.Unfortunately, the second half is where it gets worse. All the way through it, I was asking myself "what on Earth is happening?" and "how is this even possible?" There is no way any of this could be real, it's just too stupid.Firstly, all the white people are complete caricatures of colonial stereotypes. Every white person hates Chinese people and mercilessly beats them, subdues them and oppresses them. There were three main white characters: firstly, a police chief who said his lines so woodenly and with so little emotion that he couldn't possibly be an actor: he just can't be; secondly a police inspector who has so little respect for the local population that I fail to see how his superiors thought employing him was a good idea: he was bound to cause an incident sooner or later; and thirdly, a British boxer who for some reason hates everything Chinese with a passion: he also couldn't act.Somehow, and I kept asking myself how the plot turned this way, the police inspector organises a boxing competition by importing a British boxer named "Twister" (we never actually hear his real name; perhaps he's like Cher and has only one name). The boxer is so one-dimensional he makes Dr. Evil look deep. Anyway, the boxing tournament with only one boxer (!) was supposed to follow a demonstration of Chinese martial arts. The boxer can't contain his contempt and anger and no one seems to stop him when he starts beating up every single martial artist in the ring single handedly. Following this, a middle-aged martial arts master called Well-Hung or something feels disrespected and demands an apology and surprise surprise the boxer will only give it to him if he loses in a match to Well-Hung.By this time, I thought I was watching a comical, ironic parody. The boxer wears his gloves and easily defeats the martial arts master, Well-Hung, and kills him in the ring. Why on Earth would this happen? The boxer is wearing gloves, and only uses his fists while the martial artist uses bear knuckles and kicks! It's ludicrous! After Well-Hung dies I realised this film is quickly turning into a blatant rip off of Rocky IV except not as good. Pac-Man looks on while the master is dying, he refuses to throw in the towel because Well-Hung wants to defend his honour even at the cost of his own life and then Pac-Man decides to fight the boxer in the ring to get revenge. There's even a small training montage with Pac-Man's wife and son looking on! How can people take this Rocky IV parody seriously?! The pre-fight talk where Pac-Man challenges the boxer has some sort of speech by the boxer who says that he will fight someone for as long as a joss stick burns. He then laughs about how stupid joss sticks are and Pac-Man gets offended. Needless to say, we never hear about joss sticks again.So we get to the fight and we KNOW what's going to happen and who'll win don't we? Firstly, problems with the fight: Pac-Man seems to be able to defeat numerous skilled martial artists and masters sometimes simultaneously as seen in the first film and in this yet he has difficulty with ONE boxer who only punches AND is wearing gloves; believable? As if. After Pac-Man kicks the boxer and performs low blows, the judges change the rules so that he can't kick. Except, he still kicks afterwards, oh and he does rabbit punches, elbowing, choking, eye gouging, arm twisting and other moves about which no one complains all with no gloves on. Why did the judges only think of the rules after the fight starts? They would KNOW Pac-Man would want to do all these moves!The boxer knocked down Pac-Man twice and was beating him mercilessly and the referee didn't stop the fight and one time he was knocked down, the count went to nine and he wasn't up on ten yet was allowed to continue! What sort of boxing match is this? It's completely unbelievable! After getting knocked down again and remembering his fallen hero, Well-Hung, Pac-Man decides to get up again and uses various moves the boxer isn't allowed to do and gets him down and starts punching his face repeatedly all while the referee does nothing. Why does the referee allow Pac-Man time to get up when the boxer knocks him down but allows Pac-Man to punch the boxer repeatedly in the face after he's been knocked down? Oh, but the boxer's unfair too because he got ONE (count it, ONE) punch in after the bell went. All while this was going on, I was asking "what the hell is happening here?" The Rocky IV rip off continues afterwards too. Pac-Man gives a speech about how we should all get along with the boxer listening from the corner and the evil white men clapping along in the audience having changed their minds and gained respect for the foreign underdog.Awful, awful rubbish. The acting, the concept, the plot, the fight scenes and the clichés make this film one of the worst I've seen.

Vivekmaru45 Continuing from where the first film ended, Wing Chun master Ip Man and his family move to Hong Kong in the early 1950s after their escape from Foshan. There, Ip desires to open a school to propagate his art, as well as to make his living, but he has difficulty attracting students due to his lack of reputation in the city. One day, a young man named Wong Leung appears and promptly challenges Ip to a fight, but is easily defeated. Wong leaves humiliated, only to return with some friends to gang up on him. Ip beats them as well. Stunned and impressed by his skills, Wong and his friends become Ip's first students, bringing more disciples to help the school thrive.Wong is later caught posting promotional posters for the school by some Hung Gar students. One of them challenges Wong to a fight and loses, but his friends take Wong hostage in revenge and demand a ransom from Ip. Ip goes to the local wet market as directed, but the meeting ends in a confrontation with a growing mob of Hung Ga students. Ip and Wong fight their way outside to meet Jin Shanzhao — the martial artist and former bandit in the first film — who comes to their rescue with his own gang. The students' master, Hung Chun-nam, arrives to break up the fight. Ip introduces himself, and Hung informs him that before setting up a school, he needs to attend a special fighting ceremony to test his skill. Ip, Wong and Jin are subsequently arrested by Officer Fatso for disturbing the peace but are later released on bail. Hung and Fatso are then shown to be acting as reluctant collectors for the martial arts schools (including Hung's) as part of a protection racket headed by Superintendent Wallace, a corrupt officer in the Hong Kong police.Ip attends the ceremony and defeats his first challengers, and then strikes a draw with the last challenger, Hung. Ip is allowed to keep running his school on the condition that he pay the monthly protection fees, but he declines. Hung thus has his students loiter in front of the Wing Chun school and harass anyone interested, causing a street brawl between them and Ip's disciples. Ip is thus forced to close up and move the school nearer to home. Ip soon confronts Hung, who blames him since he wouldn't pay the protection fees, with Ip telling Hung that he chose to work with the Westerners. Hung insists that they finish their fight, but during this last encounter, Ip stops Hung from accidentally kicking his son as he suddenly appears, earning his respect from Hung. Ip leaves, and the next day, Hung invites him to a British boxing match he had helped to set up, quietly coming to terms with him.The boxing competition begins with the various martial arts schools demonstrating their skills. However, the event's star boxer, Taylor "The Twister" Milos, a Chinese-hating sociopath, openly insults and attacks the students, causing chaos as the masters try to restore order. Hung accepts Twister's challenge to a fight so that he can defend his culture.The fights are superb. The boxer won against Master Hong because he was old and taking medication (mostly probably for the heart). Therefore Ip Man begged Master Hong to give up the fight(same as Rocky Balboa did to Apollo Creed in ROCKY IV). The white boxer nicknamed "Twister", has a truly awesome physique and uses sheer muscle-power to beat his opponent.Next we see Ip Man challenging Twister. Now we see the effect of technique against power. Ip Man's Wing Shun provides him a counter-tactic against the strength of his opponent. Ip man is no longer young in this sequel, so he takes a lot more punishment from Twister. Had he been younger than Twister wouldn't even had a chance to touch Ip. However the sheer willpower, courage and perseverance see Ip through as he exposes Twister's weaknesses and wins the match(again I am reminded of Rocky IV match of Balboa Vs Drago).Ip Man's closing statement to the audience is powerful and though-provoking. He says that he didn't accept Twister's challenge to prove which style was better but to prove that one person's integrity or worth is not OVER that of another. He wanted also that the English and Chinese respect each others customs.This then is Ip Man 2 a worthy sequel that stands shoulder to shoulder with the original Ip Man. The ending scene shows a young Bruce Lee at Ip's door. Ip inquires as too why young Bruce wants to study Wing Chun. Bruce calmly replies: to beat up people I don't like.Ip smiles and tells him to see him when he is much older and the rest as we say is history.